Analyzing English and Thai Case Markers in Sentence Construction

Abstract

Drawing from linguistic theories and methods, this study investigated the use of case markers in English and Thai sentences in double-object sentence construction. Forty-two participants were pre-service teachers majoring in English at a university in Thailand. A written text analysis was used to examine constructs in ditransitive and dative written texts by enabling the discovery of a variety of case markers found in sentences. The syntactic and semantic realizations available to the sentence structures across the languages were found to be associated with the background of their first language. A majority of the participants wrote sentences in transitive or intransitive verb forms with or without an object. Nominative cases (NOM), dative (DAT), and accusative (ACC) markers were most frequently found in sentences across the languages.